324 Crisis Over Persia [ l 9 10 



full effect. The Constantinople Press is now violently anti-English, as 

 well as anti-French, and the announcement of intervention in Persia has 

 caused an explosion. It is certain now that Turkey will join the Triple 

 Alliance. There is talk already of sending a Turkish Army Corps to 

 the Persian frontier, and I should not be surprised if war should result. 

 Our Foreign Office game now clearly is to involve Turkey financially, 

 just as Persia has been involved. It all now depends on Germany. 

 When Churchill was here I discussed with him the possibility of an 

 invasion of Egypt, from Syria, by a Turkish army, helped by a German 

 contingent. He seemed to think it impossible, but stranger things have 

 happened. 



"23rd Oct. (Sunday). — The crisis at Constantinople will have been 

 heightened by a foolish speech made by Hardinge as prospective Viceroy 

 of India, in which he praises the late King's astuteness and his own in 

 making the alliance with Russia. He quotes the saying that Asia is 

 large enough for the two Empires to live at peace in, and applauds the 

 Convention about Persia. This will help to put the dots upon the i's. 

 One must be a fool not to see that a partition of Persia is intended, 

 though official denials are being given in our papers. It is all intensely 

 interesting and can hardly not result in a war, which I may yet live to 

 see, a war for the leadership of the Old World. 



" 24th Oct. — Big headlines announce a demonstration at Constanti- 

 nople against Russia, England and France, and an appeal to the Kaiser 

 Wilhelm as Defender of Islam. Whether my letter to Riza Tewfik 

 had anything to do with it I do not know. It must have reached Con- 

 stantinople on the 22nd and the demonstration took place on the 23rd. 

 In any case it follows very closely the lines of my advice. — Rothstein's 

 book, ' Egypt's Ruin,' is out. 



" 25th Oct. — Chapel Street. Mackarness called to talk over the plan 

 of of a new Egyptian Committee, but I foresee it will come to nothing, 

 as he can find nobody in the House of Commons willing to go in for 

 evacuation, and with anything short of that I will have nothing whatever 

 to do. It is ridiculous to go on demanding a Constitution which will 

 never be given, or a resumption of Gorst's futile regime. 



" 26th Oct. — Back to Newbuildings. As I was shooting on Shep- 

 pard's Farm an airship passed over us, the first I have yet seen, a 

 sausage-shaped dirigible balloon, drifting along at about 8 miles an 

 hour. The propeller was not working only two little vans which seemed 

 to steer it, keeping its course northward, the wind being south-east. In 

 the brilliant evening sunlight it was rather a pleasing object than other- 

 wise, as it drifted almost directly over Newbuildings at about 500 or 

 600 feet above us. 



" 2jth Oct. — The airship turns out to have been the largest yet 

 launched and to have come from Paris and to have descended at Alder- 



